Posted by
Andrews on Friday, June 20, 2008 11:44:16 AM
After writing my last essay, I realized the Pat Buchanan shares with Barack Obama a peculiar kind of blindness.Actually, they are not alone, Ron Paul and many libertarians also share this blindness. It is the strange belief that if someone is not attacking us, they are not a threat.
Let me draw an analogy. You come home from a vacation and find a rattle snake residing in your favorite chair. "Well," you think "it isn't striking, not even rattling, let it stay there.". You go upstairs and find a wolf sleeping in the baby's crib. "Ah, peacefully sleeping," you sigh, "must be a friendly wolf" and snuggle the baby up against its soft fur. And finally, retiring to bed, you and you wife see a dozen black widow egg cases hanging above your bed. "Well, they seem peaceful enough, I am sure there won't be any problem when they hatch." And off go the lights.
How long would anyone survive with that mindset?
And yet that is precisely what Buchanan, Paul, Obama and others promote as the proper way to live. Buchanan argues that England should have never attacked Germany as the neither the Nazis nor the Kaiser wanted to take on the most powerful nation of the day. Well, of course not. They wanted to take out small countries before taking on the big boys. Then again Pat thinks we should help take out Israel to make peace with Arab states, so I sometimes wonder if he is more of a blind isolationist or hater of Jews. One could argue either way on that one.
Paul is equally bizarre in his beliefs. In fact, in my analogy above, he would probably actually feed the baby to the wolf to keep it quiet. His isolationism is so extreme that he even wonders if the federal government should respond to the invasion of individual states. (Perhaps it was a joke, perhaps not. The fact that we can actually debate that says he is a bit extreme in his beliefs.) His view of World War II is that we should have allowed Germany and Japan to take over whatever they wished. Which is fine until they have taken everything else and turn on the US.
Finally, we come to Obama, and today's Democrats. They seem to think that unless Iran comes out and says "we are building nuclear weapons to attack the US", we should do nothing more than talk. They have not realized that, while talking, Iran can continue to develop technology and build weapons for future use. They seem to think that somehow talk stops the clock, and Iran will not dare do anything while negotiating.
The truth is, no matter how bad a reputation "preemptive attacks" have, they are needed, as are attacks before another nation declares war. Libertarians argue it is not so, that we should only fight after being attacked, but that is absurd. Do you let a burglar stalk through your house unimpeded and only fight back after he has drawn his pistol? Or do you shoot him when he comes through the door?
And for those who want to argue
from the founders, have they forgotten Jefferson and the Barbary pirates?